POSTED: Tuesday, June 29, 2010, 11:10 PM
Happy Hour is a place to vent daily frustrations and unwind, a time to reconnect with friends and coworkers you don't mind seeing beyond the boundaries of Cubicle Land. It's is also the ideal time to score a deal on your favorite gustatives and gulpables. For this feature, Team Meal Ticket hops to happy hours across the land and files a report every Tuesday.
Let's delve into it at Xochitl.
WHERE YOU AT?
Headhouse has plenty of highlights —
Pizzeria Stella,
Bodhi Coffee, pubs like the
Artful Dodger and the
Dark Horse — but we're of the opinion that
Xochitl (408 S. Second St.), with no disrespect to
Café Nola, put the Second-and-Lombard square on the map as a dining destination. The Mexican restaurant, which even predates the wildly popular Headhouse Square Sunday farmers market, was a smash under chef
Dionicio Jimenez —
but he left in February to helm El Rey, and owners
Steve Cook and
Mike Solomonov took the opportunity to
revamp both the interior and the food. New chef
Lucio Palazzo now cooks a menu that's more casual than the O.G. incarnation, in a space that's a touch less stuffy and a touch more kitschy (peep the "loteria" El Diablito and El Gallo playing cards stenciled on the wall).
WHAT'S THE SCENE?
Plenty of Xochitl happy hours we've hopped into in the past have been packed, but yesterday the joint was a ghost town (ciudad fantasma?) at 5:30 in the evening. Servers decked out in their dope Numero Diez futbol jerseys (where can we get one?) traipsed across the floorboards while oldies ("Can't Hurry Love," "The Wanderer") wafted through the peaceful bar side; a crestfallen and thankfully muted
Andy Roddick whined about another Wimbledon failure on the TVs. A few other folks drifted into the restaurant while we were there, but we had the high-backed bar stools mostly to ourselves for this particular happy hour.
WHAT'S THE DEAL?
The restaurant offers an
evening happy hour every day from 5 to 7 p.m. —
draft beers come down to $3 (they're typically $5) and
house margaritas will set you back $5 instead of $8. (They also do a
late-night happy hour Thursday to Saturday, from 10 to midnight, in the cozy downstairs lounge.) Xochitl's draft system was down for maintenance yesterday, so they applied the same $3 deal to cans of
Modelo Especial (usually $4). Xochitl's bartenders make some of the best 'ritas in town (the speed with which they juice the living hell of limes is slightly hypnotic), so that should be your main focus here. Our only disappointment with this HH is the lack of a food component (how about $2 off tacos or something like that?), especially considering how good Palazzo's grub is. Peep the octopus/morcilla sausage skewers, plated atop a smear of jawsome black garlic mole.
